great a Lover of the world if He knew nothing of that side of life? But He,
and His greatest followers--St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine and St.
Theresa, and countless others who have followed them--learned to transmute
that great creative force, disdained both choices which I set before you,
finding a nobler and more glorious way. These would neither repress this
great impulse, nor dissipate it, but so used it for the service of man that
there is in all the history of man no life more rich, more human, more full
of love, more full of creation, or more full of power, than the lives of
these celibate men and women, who learned from Christ how they could live
and love.

It is not easy for men and women this way, but it is possible. It is
possible, and it is glorious; and, in its degree, the need for it comes to
everyone. Do not imagine that it is not needed in marriage as well as
out of marriage. Every married lover will tell you that if his love is to
remain what it was in the beginning--if it is rather to grow in power and
beauty--he also must be able gradually to transmute his love in such a way
that the spirit dominates the flesh more and more, and that the physical
side of marriage becomes simply an expression of the love of the spirit,
the perfect final expression, the sacrament of love. Do not imagine that
this is not needed, this effort, and this power, by every human being who
desires to be human in his love, and not something less than human. And to
those to whom the need comes in its sternest form, I will not pretend for
a moment that it is not hard. Nay, I will prophesy to you that if you do so
choose to serve the world, it will to all of you sometimes seem too hard.
With Christ, with St. Francis, your human nature will sometimes assert
itself. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the
Son of Man"--the Servant of Humanity--has no such joy. But of whatever life
you choose, that is sometimes true. To the finest spirit in marriage there
comes sometimes the thought that, but for this great claim, he might have